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maanantai 30. kesäkuuta 2014

it rained yesterday for the whole day. We still had round forty visitors during the open garden day. The visitors didn't seem to mind the weather but in the end my husband and I were both wet and cold.

There was a small pause in the rain and my pink poppies immediately started to open. After it started to rain again the poppies closed the petals to wait for sunshine. And they are still waiting as it is raining again...

sunnuntai 29. kesäkuuta 2014

I use cheap tablecloths on our garden tables. The cloths last for about two to three summers as they are outside come rain come sunshine. For the start it felt a bit strange to leave the cloths in the rain but then I thought that they cost less than a pot of summer flowers which are thrown away after one summer and they do make the garden prettier.

torstai 26. kesäkuuta 2014

Now the garden looks as it should. Normally I have started gardening in the beginning of May but this summer I started last Friday. As I wanted the garden to be perfect for this Sunday (open gardens day), there was quite a lot to do.

keskiviikko 25. kesäkuuta 2014

The start of our holiday was cold and wet but it seems that it is getting warmer. It has been a good weather to weed and clean up the garden so I am not complaining, but it is nice to see the sun again!

keskiviikko 18. kesäkuuta 2014

It is not very dark at night and last weekend the full moon made everything even brighter. Our flower pots were in front of the shop as we had a flea market there on Sunday and I wanted to decorate the front a bit. They looked good in moonlight, too.

tiistai 17. kesäkuuta 2014

Orange, blue and yellow, can't get much more colour than that in a same vase. Lilies, day lilies and iris are great flowers for vase as they don't usually have any bugs. You can't bring aquilegias or cowparsley inside as your room would be filled with all kinds of flying insects.

sunnuntai 15. kesäkuuta 2014

Our bond is really small. The birds like to go there to drink so it is not quite useless. And it will look great as soon as I have it edged with flowerbeds. Now there are more weeds than flowers but luckily some flowers (Cerastium tomentosum) don't care about the weeds.

perjantai 13. kesäkuuta 2014

What happens when you don't visit your cottage very often? You get squatters - this time a little bird made a nest on our chalkboard. There was even one little egg there so we let the nest be. The bird has one week to hatch before we claim our porch back!

tiistai 10. kesäkuuta 2014

You may remember I told you earlier that I got two brand new wheelbarrows. The trouble with new wheelbarrows is that you don't want to scratch them as they are so shiny and beautiful and you end up using the old ones instead. Lets hope the old wheelbarrows break so I finally start using the new (better) ones...

maanantai 9. kesäkuuta 2014

I just love alliums. There are lots of these in many English gardens and they are just starting to appear in Finland, too. What's not to love: there are big and small ones, white and colourful and the moles don't touch them.

lauantai 7. kesäkuuta 2014

In early summer I still have energy to do flower arrangements. Last week's stars were poppies that just started to flower. As I don't colour coordinate in the garden, the poppies got to stay on the same table with magenta pelargonias.

perjantai 6. kesäkuuta 2014

Who wants to smoke nowadays? Well, some people still do and you have to find nice ways to hold the cigarette stumps under cover. I bought a couple of old milk jugs for this purpose. The blue one froze last winter and its bottom got all curvy and now it can't stand on its own. Luckily I had a suitable candle holder to make it stay upright and to look even prettier.

torstai 5. kesäkuuta 2014

If you want to see colourful flowering, visit Mustila at Elimäki (Kouvola) during late May, early June. We visited Mustila last weekend and the azaleas were in flower. The rhododendrons will flower a bit later, maybe on this weekend. If you live in Helsinki, visit Haaga's rhododendron park - I heard that azaleas are at their best there, too.

Mustila is an arboretum so there are also fabulous trees and other plants. The Douglas firs from America are amazing, the highest are about 40 meters!

keskiviikko 4. kesäkuuta 2014

I don't much like garden gnomes. When we bought Vårkulla we found two old gnomes in the shed. Last weekend my husband put them behind sauna's window. If this doesn't scare unwanted visiters away, what does? Note the hatchet!! The smile seems a bit sinister when you start to think what the gnome might be planning to do...

tiistai 3. kesäkuuta 2014

I think the lilies look quite exotic even when they are not flowering. This year we have had a LOT of lily bugs - orange little buggers that eat up all your lilies if you don't kill every one of them. Otherwise there is no trouble with lilies, they are easy to grow, easy to move from place to place and they are easy for the eyes, too.

maanantai 2. kesäkuuta 2014

It's great that the house is on a hill - no trouble with floods or water standing under the house. But when you buy (heavy) furniture and need to get it to the house or decide to make a flower bed on the upper yard you don't love the hill so much.

sunnuntai 1. kesäkuuta 2014

Our apple tree is really old. Someone has known how to cut it...let's hope it survives us as we are no tree doctors! We only cut the tree if the branches touch our forehead when walking under them. I would need somebody to tell me how to cut the tree so it makes as little apples as possible. We only eat a couple and the rest are left to rot behind our shed.